Cryptocurrency Monetized Game

Consider this a stupid question ok?

As someone who once worked for people that were literally shut down by the fbi for online gambling, I have to ask…
Isn’t creating a match for an amount of crypto currency essentially gambling? Won’t this trigger / be shut down by federal gambling laws in the states?

It goes without saying that if the premise is not legal, epic won’t want to have anything to do with either profits or anything about it at all, since otherwise they accept liability/culpability at least in part…